DREAMS TO ORDER.

Press, Volume LX, Issue 18233, 18 November 1924, Page 6

DREAMS TO ORDER.

AMERICAN SCIENTIST'S SPECULATIONS.

The interpretation of dreams interested, people for more than 3000 years. The latest journals of psychoanalysis dcs-J with the same question as the earliest papyri of EgTP'k cuneform bricks of Assyria, and with little more success, says Dr.^Ed^ m E. Slcsson, director of Science bernce, in its "Daily Science News Bulletin '(Washington). Instead of -wasting time endeavouring to determine whtvb dreams mean, would we not better progress, asks Dr. Slosson, if wo tTied to find out what make dreams? could get whatever dreams we and whenever we liked, and need not bother about 3 their interpretation. H© proceeds: "We have now some prospect of progress in this direction, for our new knowledge of the hormones gives us & clue. A case in point is reported b> Finley. He had a woman patient to whom he gave a grain a day of extract of the pituitary Dody to build up her blood pressure. Her ' 'dreams bad hitherto been trivial and colourless, but after ten days of the treatment she began to have pleasurable and highlycoloured dreams. She travelled extensively in her dreams, -as she had always longed to in reality, and wherever she ■went she found the stations and cars freshly painted in pleasing colours, and the trainmen in nice new uniforms with gold braid.

Shortly Afterward the treatment was altered, and adrenalin, another of the glandular secretions, was substituted. At once a change came over the spirit of her dreams. They lost their colours and became horrible, filled with violent quarrels. ... Opium and hashish in the Orient, alcohol and cocaine in the Occident, have been from time immemorial th 6 favourite means-of escaping. from this dull. world . into the dreamland of Euphoria. Hashish also intensifies colour perception and excites chromatic dreams. I knew a lady-who was* accustomed to take a pinhesid pill of hashish gum before going to the theatre, because it brightened the scene and converted the painted backdrop into a spacious landscape. The mtornafiy-eecreted hormones are similar in. potency and effect to the . ©xteraally-administered alkaloids. An overdose of insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, causes feelings of "causeless" fear, followed by trembling, and finally collapse. The patient can recover his courage by sucking a stick of candy. An excess of activity on the part of the thyroid gland excites anxiety and irritability. Possibly anxiety. and, terror dreams in general may be caused by some disturbance in the balance of the hormones or similar organic derangement, rather than by -anything peculiarly unpleasant- in one's past experiences or present predicament. Certain foods are reputed to produce bad dreams, but this is uncertain. I have often been warned against eating mince-pie or Welsh rarebit before bedtime, but when I tried the experiment I saw neither hair nor lioof of «u nightmare. Nobody ever told me of any foods that would give pleasant'dreams. I wonder why?. Aren't there' any? But some day the chemist may- give us synthetic dreams by his synthetic compounds, and then shall our sleep always be happy and tho nightmare shall be no more.